This is a digital Studio Notebook—and an experiment.

I keep it for myself, but it lives on my website, available to other artists—or anyone—who might find my process useful for ideas of their own.

Artists often keep a studio notebook as a way to navigate their creative journey. It’s a place to log ideas, progress, challenges, inspiration…to capture thoughts and feelings and learning…a map for wayfinding.

My goal is to make it a habit to capture something from creative work a few times a week so I can regularly review my progress and move forward creatively.

I’m most excited to see what I will discover along the way.

Studio Log 2024

Featured
"I am an inspiration junkie..."
"I am an inspiration junkie..."

This spread took days and days of morning time in my Very Visual Art Journal. Pure joy and peace!

Read More →
365 Molskine Project - 2nd week of April
365 Molskine Project - 2nd week of April

My Moleskine 365 project continues! After a full quarter of the year doing these daily pages, I’ve hit a good rhythm of working on two pages spreads over two days at a time AND after four spreads, I’m scanning and documenting the work here and on instagram. To keep my digital files organized, I’m grouping each set of 8 pages as week 1, 2, 3, 4 of the month (weeks 1 and 5 go with the month they start out in). Anywa, so this group is April Week 2.

Notes:

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy the process of collage? Just letting my subconscious choose images and then again, with as little conscious thought as possible, creating a composition? And yet? There’s some sense to be made (if you look, you will see it). Spreads top left and bottom left please me very much.

What’s interesting is that

Read More →
Very Visual Art Journal Continues
Very Visual Art Journal Continues

Oh my gosh, I can’t believe how much I’m loving this new project! With a new sketchbook format (landscape!) and a whole new process, I’m just so in flow—all the time!

I changed up one big thing in my process. I now begin

Read More →
365 Moleskine Project - 1st week of April
365 Moleskine Project - 1st week of April

With these four spreads, I’ve completed all the pages in my Moleskine 365 Daily Diary for the first quarter of the year. It was a busy week so most of the pages didn’t take a lot of time, but one big permission slip I’ve given myself for this project is that all I have to do is create something—anything—for every page.

One big surprise for this project so far is how many pages I end up really enjoying when I think it’s just going to be a knock off day. Also, I’m shifting to working on two page spreads every two days instead of single pages every day which makes for good rhythm.

A few notes

Top Left spread: all collage save for the ink rectangles on the left going off the page. Earlier pages show behind this spread because I collaged the cat right over the open spine without leaving enough room for the bend. Oh well!

Top Right spread: Okay, I love the dog and the cat. Gotta do more of this kind of work!

Bottom Left

Read More →
I have a sharing problem...

It’s been a week since I outlined my three projects for 2024—and this is the first effort to share progress since. I’ve completed my Moleskine pages. I’ve been working on my Iterations project. I’ve added to my visual art journal. But nothing shared.

I’ve been grappling with the question of why share my work online. I pretty much didn’t share on instagram or here on my website all of 2023 because I decided I didn’t have a compelling answer.

But the desire to share didn’t leave and now I know for sure that I DO want to share my work on Instagram and my art practice here on the Studio (b) Log.

Why? Well, let’s see if I can articulate this.

It comes down to

Read More →
Three Main Projects for 2024
Three Main Projects for 2024

I’ve landed on three ongoing projects for 2024 that I’m just now ready to articulate and formalize here. Each scratches a different creative itch, and each is sustainably structured to avoid some of the past pitfalls of my long term protects.

I want to share progress as I go here on the Studio (b) Log, so I’m outlining them all here to document the beginning and as reference for what each is all about.

  • 365 Day Moleskine - Anything a Day

  • Monthly Iterations Studies

  • True Art Journal

I did worry BTW that maybe three ongoing projects might be too ambitious, but it turns out it’s not too much at all. I don’t work on all three projects every day and really, all but the final works I hope to create from the studies (see below) take small segments of time and my expectations are kept low. All I really ask of myself is that I pay attention to what give me joy—and do as much of that as I can.

Okay - so the three projects:

365-Day Moleskine

Read More →
IS Illustrated life drawing for me?
IS Illustrated life drawing for me?

I created a set of panels in my new sketchbook that capture something of my guided meditations last week. They might not make sense to anyone else, but they document the images that came to me. Some thoughts:

  1. After reviewing and reflecting on my last sketchbook, I double downed on my intention to do more illustrated life journaling —and I immediately hit familiar roadblocks. First, especially when I started to add ink to the graphite sketches, the self criticism began that did not stop. From color choices to “bad” drawings, I was absolutely sure this page was a mess.

    So sure that I went to bed last night feeling down,. Before lights out, I scrolled through Pinterest looking for art I enjoy as opposed to this crap I’d currently made (I did get madly inspired as often happens—more on that later) I went to sleep deciding that illustrated journaling is not for me, after all.

    And of course I woke up this morning to see that maybe the page isn’t bad at all. The drawing is rough - it is in pencil - but that was intended. The blue/greys work and the dark blue ink isn’t so bad - and in fact I could have added more in a few other places (maybe I will).

    Like I said about all the other illustrated life drawings I’ve done—this is a huge pattern: hate it while making and then afterwards I’m surprised that it’s not total crap.

  2. A note about media and color. I glazed over graphite sketches with

Read More →

Sketchbook 2023